A French consul was killed by gunfire as fresh unrest erupted a year after 6,000 UN troops and 1,400 police arrived in Haiti, while the UN Security Council failed to extend the UN stabilization force's stay through elections in a matter of months.
In the latest violence, France's honorary consul for the northern city of Cap Haitien, Paul-Henri Mourral, died late on Tuesday after he was shot in his car en route from Cap Haitien to the capital, a spokesman for the French embassy here said.
At least two other people were killed by gunfire earlier on Tuesday in the Haitian capital where a market was also burned down, witnesses said.
PHOTO: AFP
An AFP photographer saw the bodies of two people killed by gunshots, as well as a wounded man rushed to a nearby hospital in a vehicle. According to market vendors, several people were killed and wounded. There was also much property damage.
The violence, blamed on backers of ousted former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, occurred near Cite Soleil, one of Port-au-Prince's largest shanty towns and home to 300,000 people.
The gunshots and fire caused large traffic jams in the capital as drivers fled downtown.
Eric Bosc, a spokesman for the French embassy, said that Mourral, who owned a hotel in Cap Haitien, was rushed to Saint-Joseph Hospital in Port-au-Prince, but doctors could not save his life because he had lost too much blood.
There was no word about who fired on Mourral's car when it was near the airport.
As the unrest flared, Port-au-Prince Mayor Carline Simon called for calm and denounced the violence, which she said "will not resolve the country's problems."
Simon sought help from the Red Cross and police to rescue people under threat.
Haitian radio Tropic FM reported that UN stabilization-force soldiers and Haitian police took up positions after midday around the presidential palace. Sporadic gunfire could be heard in that area.
More than 620 people have been killed by gunfire in the past seven months, most in the capital, human-rights groups say. Some Port-Au-Prince neighborhoods remain under the thumb of armed Aristide supporters who continue to press for his return to power.
In New York, the UN Security Council on Tuesday renewed its stabilization mission to Haiti for only 24 days after failing to agree on a longer deployment.
The US wants congressional approval before agreeing to field more troops, and China wants only a six-month extension because Haiti's recognition of Taiwan.
However, diplomats said it was unlikely that China would scuttle the mission on the eve of Haiti's elections.
Last month Aristide said he would not run in the presidential election scheduled for later this year in his Caribbean homeland, the Americas' poorest country.
Aristide, who has been living in exile in South Africa for almost a year, said he was barred by the Haitian Constitution from seeking a third term.
Faced with insurrection and large street protests, Aristide bowed to pressure from the US, France and Canada and fled Haiti on Feb. 29 last year.
In Port-au-Prince, UN forces have stepped up interventions in crowded slums as security conditions worsen.
The US State Department recently decided to remove US officials' relatives and non-essential US personnel. Interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue has said he was dumbfounded by the US move.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's representative in Haiti, Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdes, painted a more encouraging picture in his assessment of the situation, however.
He said that the UN forces had made it possible for Haiti not to have its territory carved up, and to keep the interim government stable.
Yet Valdes did acknowledge that the mission "has not yet succeeded in offering Haitian citizens, especially in Port-au-Prince, an acceptable security situation," a priority ahead of elections.
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